Ongoing site issues - another migration tomorrow

Well, as anyone reading can see, the site is finally back up in a partial state.

I've got somebody working on the site, but don't have a specific time frame for when it will be fully fixed. We've been having issue after issue with the site's web hosting provider, and I'm getting very put out with them.

The gist of the problem is that they wanted to move the site and all its data to a new server which is incompatible with some of the website's older code. That's why I made that initial stickied post at the top of the forums. They only gave us a week's warning for something that was going to take much longer than a week to fix. Knowing this was going to be an issue, I asked them for some time to try to update the code to be compatible, and they agreed to allow me the time I needed. My intention was to get everything fixed on my end, notify everyone about an impending site downage with plenty of time in advance, then temporarily take the site down while the web host migrated it to the new server. Instead, they decided to go ahead and move the site without notifying me, this after they had promised otherwise, which messed up the code and resulted in what you saw when you tried to get on the site now. On top of that, I've been having problems logging into the terminal to fix the problems. I take full responsibility for not providing an alternative means of allowing all the members to communicate, but I thought I had more time to get that set up and spread the information to everyone on the site, and to ensure they wouldn't break the code like they did.

Unfortunately, this isn't the end of our issues, but they're getting fixed slowly and surely.

Thanks' for the update.

MMO

I for one, truly appreciate all the time and effort you put into this site. Thank you!

Nice to see it back ... I had almost given up hope.

thank you!

We appreciate the time and effort you put in to keeping this all going. Glad to see it back.

Very much appreciate how much time you put into the site. Its great to have it back, even if there are still a few things to be sorted out. For a while I thought the whole thing had gone belly-up.

Thank you for all the time and effort in getting it back up and running.

John

Thanks for the hard work. It would be a real shame to loose all the great knowledge on this site provided by the dedicated hand gunners who posted it here.

Thanks for all your'e work Chance, glad to see it going again.

WHAT IS LEFT TO BE DONE?

CAN WE POST PICTURES AS BEFORE?

IS THE "THUMBNAIL" ON THE BRAGGING BOARD THE WAY IT IS GOING TO BE?

Thanks for the update!

Dick

I can't take that much credit. Had to ask a coworker and friend of mine, Ted, for help since he has a far greater understanding of tech than I do.



1. Much. This whole site needs a complete modernization overhaul. Another "update" is liable to break something else. It will probably end up looking different when everything is done, but it will function just the same.

2. Not yet. You can still link pictures from the bragging board if you can find them:
I would recommend using an external image host for now.

3. No, I wanted the forums back up first and foremost. Everything else will come later.

Thank you for all the work you do Chance!!!

Thanks for getting things back up an running, if only partially for now.

Thanks for getting the site back up and running. Your efforts are appreciated.

Thank you for everything that you're doing and all that you'll continue to do to get the issues worked out.

THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATES

thanks!

Thank you for the updates and your hard work - it is greatly appreciated!

Thank you for the progress report. Much appreciated.

Thanks for all the work. Know it is a handfull and headache sometimes.

Update about the Bragging Board:

Ted discovered the guy who wrote the Photopost code that the bragging board uses has evidently died a while back. Since he's no longer around to update it to conform to newer internet/hosting software, we'll have to look for alternatives. Ted's been testing an another program, but it doesn't seem to like uploads from mobile devices at the moment.

The member articles section doesn't seem to be working. I'm sure it'll happen in due course. At this stage do we know whether the old articles have been salvaged and just waiting for the new programming to be updated?

ps This isn't a criticism, rebuilding the entire website must be an enormous job. Thanks for all your work.

The old articles are still in the code. Everything is still here, even if it doesn't show up. In this case, the PHP code just still isn't displaying things right.

By the way, if anyone notices any bugs or issues apart from the articles and bragging board, definitely let me know just in case we missed something.

Many thanks.

Good morning,
Is uploading photos a part of the errors? I am having trouble uploading. I get an error that says to contact the administrator.

Sorry for the late response, must have overlooked it. Yes, that's definitely something we're looking into. We're looking into alternative software still. Haven't made much progress since Ted's motherboard died in his computer and he had to order a replacement.

Just got an email from our hosting provider that they're migrating the site - again - tomorrow to yet another new server. I don't expect this move to cause nearly as much trouble as the one back in February, but you can certainly expect the site to be briefly inaccessible while the move is in process.

What does "briefly" mean? Thanks.